mmreviewsfandomcom-20200214-history
Bioshock = System Shock 2 - Here's Why
Okay, a friend tells me he doesn't see the similarities. I'm here to point out the similarities. WARNING: Major spoilers to two of the greatest games of all time, read at your own risk. Story The player is a voiceless protagonist (other then Goggle's "Nah" at the end) who suffers from not being able to properly remember their past. You are inserted into a secluded, inescapable area where everything used to be wonderful for a while, but then everything went to hell. It is your job to survive in this place using any means necessary, using audio logs and the environment to piece the back-story together and get out of the horrible place alive, also seeing ghostly apparitions that further add to the dark, oppressive, unique atmosphere. The voice who immediately contacts you, named Polito/Atlas, tells you the culprit for the place getting f***ed up was XERXES/Ryan, the AI in charge of managing the ship/the guy in charge of managing the city, but you have to fight through an army of an alien hive-mind called The Many/drugged up citizens who've gone insane who are being commanded by XERXES/Ryan to consume you to their biomass/murder you. (The Many is more interesting because it isn't technically evil, it's a living organism that wishes to have piece and unity all with one mind. The splicers are just druggies.) You fight your way through thick and thin, often times having a massive set back just as soon as you think the path is easy, causing massive amounts of back-tracking. One of these hindrances involves you having to use a bunch of random ingredients to create a toxin to kill off sludge blocking the elevator/stop the trees from dieing. Eventually once you finally complete the task Polito/Atlas has been commanding you to do, it is revealed that they have been manipulating you the whole time, and that it was really SHODAN/Fontaine. (This is more interesting on the Bioshock side of things because of the mind control elements.) Since you got rid of her/his problem, XERXES/Ryan, she/he stabs you in the back, taking over the place as a result and threatening the rest of Earth. Free from manipulation, you head off for a final crappy boss fight after a final crappy preceding level that clearly shows the developers were running out of time and money. Oh, but it doesn't stop there! Gameplay (Offensive) *Security Camera - System Shock 2's line of sights are not as easily noticed and they are easier to destroy. *Turret - No difference *Melee Many/Melee Splicer - No difference *Shotgun Many/Machine Gun Splicer - They have a different basic gun equipped *Grenade Many/Grenade Splicer - No difference *Cyborg Assassin/Houdini Splicer - Alot of difference, this can be blamed on System Shock 2's lower budget *Rumbler/Big Daddy - The Big Daddy has a gun and faster charge. *SHODAN/Fontaine - Both craptacular final boss fights. Fontaine's is better just because of presentation. *Bee hives/Annelid eggs - I'm serious. Gameplay (Defensive) First off, obviously plasmids are a more streamlined and easy to digest version of the psyonic abilities. Bioshock handled this better because honestly I've never bothered with Shock 2's psyonic abilities. Anyway... *The wrench is still a wrench *The pistol is still a pistol *The machine gun is still a machine gun *The shotgun is still a shotgun *The grenade launcher is still a grenade launcher *There are vending machines to get supplies from that you also can hack *There are machines to upgrade your abilities with a unique currency *There are one-time use machines that give you a selection of only one of it's many available upgrades *Vitachambers = Resurrection booths, it's just that resurrection booths actually gave a penalty from your currency and thus death was something you actually wanted to avoid. *Adam = Cybernetic modules, used to upgrade your abilities. *Eve = Psy Hypo *Health kits = Med Hypo *Food = Food *Alcohol = +Health -Eve/Psyonic (Why does this even decrease Eve? It made sense in Shock 2 as psyonics were linked to mind power and alcohol damages that.) *Cigarettes = -Health +Eve/Psyonic *Audio logs = Audio diaries *Enemy health bars prominently displayed. *Bathysphere/Elevator means you can generally travel easily between most game areas beside the tutorial area and the final areas. *Everything you kill, every object you find, you loot. Conclusion That's all I can think of off the top of my head at the moment. Dead Space 1 may be getting the same treatment soon. Bioshock is still amazing, but perhaps not quite the messiah of gaming everyone seems to think it is. How far can content creators go before "Inspired by" becomes "Ripped off?"